“Lost” Beats

That’s about the attitude that forgotten Beat writer Seymour Krim — a study in crankiness, literature devotion, uncompromising insight and New York intemperateness — took toward the famous opening line of Allen Ginsberg’s generation-making Howl. The poet may have seen “the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,” but Krim wanted it on the record that he wasn’t one of them. Or as Krim might have said if Sam Goldwyn hadn’t already said it, “Include me out.”